Why move at all

I guess the pull to use markdown and github as a blogging platform was too great - github pages have that elusive it just works factor.

Originally, I had grand visions of making it a DIY project, but between working and helping out on a startup, as well as keeping up with study on Azure and other tech, this was starting to feel like a fools errand. Blogging was more important than learning to use angular 2 & nodejs to integrate with Github. So while Medium was tempting, this setup proved to be closer to my original intent. And I’m pleased with the result.

Stack share

So - for those interested, the tech stack here is:

  • Git & Github Pages for versioning/hosting
  • Markdown, SASS & HTML5 for content generation
  • Jekyll (runs on Ruby) for engine and scaffolding
  • Disqus for driving user engagement
  • Godaddy for the DNS entries and domain name purchasing/management.
  • Outlook aliases for any emails to this blog.
  • A humble macbook pro

This arrangement costs nothing (Domain registration not withstanding) and the workflow is as follows:

  • Create / edit a post.md
  • open terminal
git add .
git commit -m 'describe change'
git push

Other considerations

I found importing my existing content from The Maintenance Coder to be a simple affair - thanks to the jekyll-import ruby gem and its documentation. It wasn’t 100%, but it got me 80% of the way there and even downloaded image assets etc. Again, pretty happy.

Markdown choice wasn’t entirely OOTB - I went with the documentation for using redcarpet - for the Github Flavoured Markdown (syntax highlighting was a must - something I struggled with on wordpress.com)